70-year-old virgin Pam Shaw says she is at last ready for sex

A 70-year-old virgin, after a lifetime of celibacy, says she is now ready to lose her virginity. But her standards are still as high as ever. She is still waiting for a tall, dark and handsome millionaire to sweep her off her feet.

Pam Shaw was a cabaret singer in her youth and because she put her career first, she let many opportunities for love pass her by. Though she lived the freewheeling life of a cabaret singer, performing under the raunchy stage name "The Sextational Pam," she says she did not believe in sex before marriage.

But after guarding her virginity for more than five decades, Pam, of Wigan, Greater Manchester, says she is now ready for sex with the right man. She told The Sun that though she is ready for it, the man who would take her virginity would have to marry her first: “I may be 70 years old, but I'm very young at heart. People can't believe it when I tell them my age. I think I look great - maybe because I've never been married or had kids. But now's the time - I'm ready to take the plunge for the right bloke. My standards are still very high. I'm hoping to bag a millionaire with tall, dark and handsome good looks. I feel I am ready to give marriage a go and maybe go to bed with a man. You are never too old for anything. Just look at Joan Collins.”

Pam, who lived with her mother Lilian until she died in 1995 at the age of 97, assures her prospective suitors she is still a "real catch." She says: "I'm loads of fun and bundles of energy. I go to salsa and Zumba classes every week and have loads of friends. I like to think I'd be a real catch."

Mirror reports that during her career, she performed with sex symbols in the entertainment industry such as Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Roger Moore but never went to bed with any man.

The Sun reports she said: "I was never short of offers in my heyday - men saw the outfits I wore on stage and thought I would be easy. But I've never really been intimate with a man - just a bit of kissing. I had a sexy stage name and dressed sexy, but that was all for my career. There has never really been any time for me to get a man - I worked so much that sometimes I'd only have one hour's sleep each night."

Pam won a TV talent show in the 1960s and she opened shows for Ken Dodd and Engelbert Humperdinck, and performed onstage in Las Vegas. She said she even shared a dressing room with the The Voice judge Tom Jones, now 71, when he performed in Bolton Casino for a week. She said: "Tom was very good looking and we used to chat occasionally before I went on stage as the opening act. In the late 60s we performed together. There was only a curtain separating our dressing areas."

According to The Sun, it was Humperdinck, now 75, who made the biggest impression on her. She said: "Engelbert and I stayed in the same lodging house in Leeds in the late 60s. He always had an eye for the ladies and he was eventually banned from bringing back girls to the guesthouse. Although he was very flirtatious with me, my mum was my chaperone and wouldn't allow any funny business. One morning I found a note on a toilet roll hanging from the door handle from Engelbert. It said: 'Please do not disturb; Pamela and her mum snoring.' I remember watching TV with him when Please Release Me was reviewed on a kids TV show. We were all so pleased when it was considered a hit."

Pam said what kept her going in celibacy was her strong work ethic. She said: "Just like now, in those day women were throwing themselves at stars. But I've always had a very strong work ethic and finding romance always came below getting ahead in my career. I wouldn't have entertained the idea of sex outside of marriage, and marriage meant giving up on my dreams. Even over the last few years my career is still going strong. I worked with Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle on a feature film called Strumpet in 2002."

Pam said she once almost got married, to an oil rig worker but she broke it up when she realized she did not really fancy him. She said: "In 1976 I was proposed to by an oil rig worker in Blackpool. I said yes but later broke it off when I realized I didn’t fancy him."

The Inquisitr comments generously that Pam still stands a good chance of fulfilling her dream. Statistics show "the average person loses his or her virginity at 17.3-years old," but she is only just "slightly older."